


each offering of tenderness

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Gen, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rebuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 16:29:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14856215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: "I can fix it," Rey insists. "I can fix anything."





	each offering of tenderness

If we were   
made to be whole, we wouldn't be so lost   
to each offering of tenderness and a story  
\--"Olives, Bread, Honey and Salt" by Melissa Stein

*

"I'm sorry," says Rey, holding out the two halves of Luke's old lightsaber to the General. "Kylo Ren wanted it, but I couldn't let him have it. Not after—" Not after he'd dived headlong into the dark without a backward glance. She looks away, down at the mangled lightsaber in her hands. "I thought he would turn back."

The General looks older and more tired than Rey's ever seen her, purple shadows under her eyes and tight lines around her mouth. She's just lost everything, but she reaches out a hand and squeezes Rey's shoulder in comfort. "Thank you for trying." 

"Do you want it?" Rey asks.

The General lefts out a soft huff—Rey can't tell if she's scoffing or laughing or some combination of the two. "No. And even if I did, it's in no shape to do us any good."

"I can fix it," Rey insists. "The crystal is still intact." She can still hear it singing to her quietly, and she wonders for the first time if maybe the General _can't_ hear it, and that's why she needs to be told.

"Rey—"

"I can fix it," she repeats, trying to ignore how much it sounds like a plea. "I can fix anything."

The General nods. "Okay. You do that." She gives Rey a sad smile and touches her cheek gently before heading back into the captain's cabin. What's left of the Resistance is sprawled out in the common area of the ship, and Rey reminds herself that they're sleeping, not dead, that she managed to save some of them, even if she couldn't save them all. She steps over their sleeping bodies carefully, trying not to wake them.

Finn isn't asleep though, and he follows her into the cargo hold. "You okay?" he asks.

"Yeah." Rey smiles and she knows it's almost as sad as the General's. She shows him the broken lightsaber. "I'm going to fix it."

"Okay," he says with a small smile of his own. "But maybe get some sleep first?"

Rey knows she's not going to be able to sleep but she says, "All right," because she can't say no when Finn gives her that beseeching look. 

She lies down and he curls up around her, his chest solid and warm at her back, and she makes a list of everything she'll need to rebuild the lightsaber while he breathes softly against the nape of her neck.

*

Rey and Poe and Chewie rotate in and out of the cockpit over the next few days. They're in hyperspace for long stretches of time, so there's not a whole lot to do. Rey's not sure what she was expecting, but the General sits with each survivor and talks, providing a listening ear and a comforting hand on a shoulder, for each person left alive. She keeps them from despair, though Rey can feel how heavily it weighs on her, even if she hides it with a joke and a wry smile.

Her strength makes them all strong, and Rey frets that she's going to burn out before they get wherever it is they're going. She lets Rey fuss over her for a moment or two before shooing her away. 

"You worry about getting that lightsaber working again and let me worry about the Resistance."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Leia," the General responds with great weariness, though there's a warm spark in her eyes. "Please call me Leia."

"Thank you," Rey says, whole-heartedly and wanting to live up to the trust the General seems to have in her. She takes her leave so the next person can get whatever pep talk the General—Leia—has for them today.

Chewie finds her scrounging for parts in the supply locker, wiring and power cells and tiny tools that are capable of the delicate work she's got in front of her.

"Here," he says, pulling out a polished durasteel box from a cubbyhole way above her head. It's nicer than anything else Rey's seen on the _Falcon_ , and Chewie unlocks it with the press of a paw. The top lifts away to reveal tiered rows of compartments filled with all manner of useful bits and bobs of machinery. "Han used to keep it on hand for Luke. Just in case."

Rey blinks back tears and swallows a lump in her throat before she says, "Thanks, Chewie. That's, that's helpful."

"Good. I wouldn't want them to go to waste."

"They won't," she says with a watery laugh. "You know me. I've never met a spare part I couldn't use somehow."

"I know." He puts a gentle paw on her head. "Han was just the same."

*

Rey doesn't really know most of the survivors, and she'd been afraid they would pelt her with questions about Luke, about the First Order, about the Force, but they give her a wide berth, though she can hear their whispers when they think she's asleep. She's not sleeping, though; she's too afraid Kylo Ren will find her in her dreams, since she's shut him out in the waking world. She tries to focus on minor repairs to the Falcon when she's not working on the lightsaber. There's so much to do and so little space to do it in.

"You can't keep going like this," Finn says after she burns herself with the soldering iron because she's too tired to pay attention.

Rey sticks her burnt thumb in her mouth so she doesn't have to answer.

"Talk to me," he says, taking her free hand and squeezing it gently. "Please." 

She glances around and shakes her head. It was one thing to tell Leia about her foolishness, but she doesn't want the entire Resistance to know. 

"Rey." Finn's voice is half plea, half demand.

Either way, Rey can't resist him. "Not here."

Finn nods. "Okay." He puts a gentle hand on her elbow and steers her around clumps of people whose names she still needs to learn, until they're in the cockpit with Poe and Chewie. 

Chewie takes one look at them and growls in approval on his way out of the cockpit. 

"What?" Finn asks. "What did he say?"

"He thinks I'll feel better if I tell you everything."

Poe chimes in with, "He's not wrong."

Rey opens her mouth to say something cutting, and then closes it again. She's so tired and Poe doesn't deserve the sharp edge of her tongue, even if he hasn't been all that forthcoming about what Kylo Ren did to him aboard the Finalizer. 

Beebee-Ate burbles that she'll feel better when she's purged the bad data that's keeping her from sleep mode, and she laughs softly and rests a grateful hand on his dome.

"I'm afraid to sleep," she says, and tells them everything, even the embarrassing parts, about what happened with Luke and Kylo Ren. 

Poe goes pale when she mentions the psychic bond Snoke formed between her and Ren, and it seems natural enough to take his hand and give it a squeeze, the way Finn is squeezing her hand. Finn gives her an encouraging smile when she finally wraps up her story. 

"And now I need to fix Luke's lightsaber, but I can't do it if I don't get some sleep first." She releases Poe's hand to pinch the bridge of her nose and can't help the smile when he takes it back as soon as she lowers it. She sucks in a deep breath. Chewie was right, of course. She already feels better. 

"We're here," Finn says. "We'll keep watch while you sleep."

"Yeah," Poe says, though he looks about as convinced as Rey is that it will have any effect. Beebee-Ate whistles that he'll handle anyone from the First Order who tries to bother her, and extends his shock prod as proof.

"Okay," she says with a laugh. "Okay. Let's give it a try."

She resettles herself in the co-pilot's seat and closes her eyes. She can feel the hum of the engines and the presence of every person on the ship, warm and worried and tired and scared, just like her. She breathes through her anxiety, and focuses on the gentle pressure of Finn and Poe's hands in hers. And she sleeps without dreaming. 

*

Rey's at the dejarik table, eating a ration bar and paging through one of the books she scavenged—stole, if she's honest about it—from Ahch-To. She doesn't have much experience with paper books. Unkar Plutt had had two ancient paper books in the back of his safe—he'd said they were his retirement fund and never let her touch them. This book is even older, the pages thin and the ink faded. She's used to datapads and electronic files; having to flip through pages of text to find anything is unwieldy and frustrating, and when she does find something useful, she can't always read it. Case in point, there's an exploded diagram of a lightsaber in all its component parts in one of them, but the instructions are written in a language she doesn't recognize, which makes identifying unfamiliar parts and their functions difficult.

She bites back a sigh and looks up when Rose settles down in the booth next to her. "That's an emitter matrix, isn't it?" she asks, pointing at one puzzling bit of the diagram. "I've never seen one that small."

"I don't know," Rey admits, letting the sigh out this time. "I can't read this."

Rose frowns down at the page. "I can't either, but that is definitely an emitter matrix. They use them on the laser drills on Hays Minor, in conjunction with the energy gate. They control the length and intensity of the beam. The ones on the drills are much larger, though."

"That makes sense," Rey says, the pieces slotting into place in her mind. "I'm Rey, by the way."

"I know! Finn talks about you a lot." Rose grins; it lights up her whole face and makes it impossible for Rey not to grin back. "I'm Rose."

"Finn talks about you, too." He'd spent most of their first day in hyperspace hovering at her side while Dr. Kalonia used up the last of the Falcon's bacta supply on her injuries, and he's regaled Rey with their adventures on Canto Bight over the course of their time in hyperspace. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Me, too. And I'm glad you're back. You saved us."

"Luke saved us," Rey corrects her. "I just lifted some rocks."

"We'd have been trapped if you hadn't. Finn told me." Rey opens her mouth to demur and Rose says, "Just take the compliment."

"If you knew what I did, the mistakes I made—" 

"You do know what we did, and what Poe did, and you don't hold it against us, do you?"

"No," Rey says without hesitation. "You were trying to help."

"And so were you. You're a Jedi and that's what Jedi do." Rose holds up a hand. "I have a shock prod and I'm not afraid to use it."

Rey laughs, a little nervously and a lot relieved. "Wow, okay. I can see why Finn likes you."

Rose preens at that. "He's pretty great."

"Yeah," Rey says. She picks up a still-wrapped ration bar—the Falcon has a large supply of them stashed in the oddest of places—and offers it to Rose. "You hungry?"

Rose nods and takes the ration bar. "I could eat."

They spend the rest of the meal trying to decipher the diagram, and Rey feels a little burst of hope that she's a little closer to reaching her goal, and that she doesn't have to do it alone. 

*

There's an array of power cells in the box Chewie gave her, and she's testing them when Poe settles down on the floor next to her in the cargo hold. Beebee-Ate rolls up beside him and chirps a greeting.

"How's it going?" Poe asks.

Rey scrunches up her nose. "Trying to find the right power cell."

Poe looks over the selection she's discarded and the ones she still has to go through and nods. "Yeah, I can see how that might be a problem. But I'm sure you'll find the right one. And then it'll be time for this." He makes a ta-da gesture, and Beebee-Ate offers her a slim cylinder pulled from somewhere within his storage area.

"What's this?"

"You'll need a new hilt, right?" 

"Yeah."

"Beebee reminded me I had this in my kit—it's the tube for a mini-proton torpedo from Black One." He frowns and Rey remembers hearing that his X-Wing had been destroyed when the First Order bombed the hangar of the Raddus. "We thought it might work."

Rey takes the cylinder. It's cool and smooth in her hand and about the same length Luke's lightsaber was before it was broken. It's heavy enough to feel solid, but not so heavy that it will be difficult to use. She closes her eyes and through the Force, she can see the saber as if it's already completed, grips spaced evenly along the hilt and controls set exactly as she needs them, a bright blue light shining in the darkness.

"Yeah," she says, "I think it'll do. Thank you." She pats Beebee-Ate gratefully and pulls Poe in for a one-armed hug.

"And this way, Black One is still involved in the fight," Poe whispers and Rey clings to him for just a moment longer.

*

Rey's so close to being done she can taste it, or at least sense it in the Force. She slips away after her shift in the cockpit is done—she doesn't want anyone else watching the first time she tries to turn the lightsaber on, just in case it doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

The books she stole from the temple on Ahch-To are full of ruminations on philosophy and potential ways of using the Force for all sorts of things, but none of them contains any readable information on how to actually assemble a lightsaber once she's got all the components built. It _should_ work—Rose and Chewie both looked over the wiring and all the fiddly bits involved in the emitter matrix before she wired it into the casing—but it doesn't.

Rey shakes it and knocks the bottom of the hilt with her fist, the way she would a flashlight with a dying battery, and Artoo trills a laugh. Rey starts and fumbles the lightsaber and only her Force-enhanced reflexes allow her to catch it before it clangs to the deck. She hadn't noticed he was there—droids are hard to perceive with the Force, and Artoo likes getting the drop on her when he can. Says it builds character and improves her situational awareness. She thinks he just likes sneaking up on her when nobody else can.

"To put it together, you have to use the Force," he says when she gives him a questioning look.

"Oh." Rey closes her eyes and examines the lightsaber with her other senses. She knows every switch and wire inside out by this point, and the hum of the crystal sings in her heart and her bones. It's easy enough to take it apart and fit it together again with the Force, all the new pieces coming together with the old crystal to form a perfect whole. The Force rings with rightness when she's done. 

This time, when she hits the activation button, the blade leaps out, bright and blue as the sky.

"There you go," Artoo says. "I was there when Anakin built the first lightsaber with that crystal, and with Luke when he built his." The droid's whistles are nostalgic. "And now I'm here with you, Rey." 

Rey lays her palm on his dome and smiles. "Thank you."

*

A cheer goes up when Rey shows off the newly remade lightsaber, and Chewie breaks out a bottle of Corellian whiskey Han had stashed somewhere on the ship.

"It's something worth celebrating," he says, and Leia agrees.

Rey laughs when they toast her, and offers toasts of her own to everyone who helped and encouraged her while she was working on it.

Afterwards, she sits in the pilot's chair and watches the hypnotic blue of hyperspace—so similar to the color of the lightsaber—rush by.

Leia joins her, metal tumbler in hand. "You did good work, Rey."

"Everyone helped."

"I've heard." Leia sips her whiskey quietly for a few moments, then sets her cup into the cupholder on the console. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out an intricately carved metal cube. Rey's never seen anything like it before. Leia holds it in the palm of her hand and is silent for a while. 

Rey is content to wait for her to speak, the few sips of whiskey she'd had—and the sense of belonging she'd felt from the rest of the Resistance—still warming her bones. 

"This is a Jedi holocron. It came to me from a dear friend of my father's." Her mouth curls wryly. "Both of them, as it turns out. She got it from a Jedi in a rebel cell based on Lothal, a couple of years before the Battle of Yavin, and gave it to me to give to Luke." Leia huffs wistfully. "And I meant to, I really did. I never wanted to look at it, but I know Luke was—he wanted to know him. Our biological father, I mean. Who he was before he became Vader." 

Rey can feel the Force swirling around her, around both of them, and the cube starts to glow blue, the filigreed metal opening slowly.

"Maybe if I'd showed this to Ben—" Leia shakes her head. "But I didn't. And I can't change that. But maybe it will help you."

Blue light flickers and resolves into the image of a man holding a lightsaber, _her_ lightsaber, and Luke's before her. He looks like he knows how to use it.

"You'll have plenty of space to practice when we make planetfall," Leia says. 

"You've found a base?"

"Our allies have come through." Leia smiles. "The Rebellion's not dead yet, and we're going to need a Jedi."

"I'll do my best," Rey says.

"That's all I can ask." She hands Rey the holocron, curling Rey's fingers gently around the base of it. The blue image of Anakin Skywalker doesn't waver. "Let's hope it's enough."

"I hope so, too." Rey looks from the holocron to the lightsaber at her belt to Leia's face. "I have a good feeling about it," she says with a grin.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know Kanan's holocron was damaged when Maul and Ezra tried to merge it with the Sith holocron, but maybe Ahsoka made herself a copy. You don't know. Also, while the parts of the lightsaber mentioned here come from Wookieepedia, I have no idea how you'd build one, or if you'd need the Force to put it together. It just seems like you would, given the givens.


End file.
